In order to debug the AWT with a simple applet using IE and plugin, I had to jump through incredible hoops just to end up redirecting System.out and System.err to pipe through a file, and then call these functions from native code. This took hours, whereas debugging using a simple java console would take minutes.

There is no reason that the plugin configuration program couldn't include an option for redirecting output to a console window, or provide an interface for logging support.